It’s video roundup time! Once again, Howl And Echoes are coming in hot with the freshest, most eyeball stimulating music videos to be dropped by the artists you love and some of the artists you don’t know you love yet, of this week. We do all the dirty work and herd them all into one convenient web-based location for you to enjoy every Friday so that you don’t have to. Have yourself a good old gander at the latest offerings from:
Midas.Gold – 000000
Part of a new wave of fantastically fresh Aussie hip-hop coming straight from Brisbane’s underground is Midas.Gold, who earlier this week came out swinging with a video for his new single 000000.
If you dig trap rappers like Future or Travi$ Scott and reckon they’d go alright with just a hint of Australian flavour then Midas.Gold is straight up your alley. This one is definitely fiery, backed by stellar production from the Bedlam Records crew with the MC declaring ‘I swear to God it’s dollar time’. It just might be for the Brisbane MC, not a lot of Australian hip-hop is taking a direction like this and he’s done so with aplomb.
The music video is a ripper too, Midas.Gold and crew having a great old time atop one of Brisbane’s many inner city carparks (shouts out to the security guard who politely rolls past the whole show in his golf cart) and the heart of Queen Street Mall. There’s lightning flashing in the background but the real lightning is the stuff Midas.Gold has captured in a bottle here on 000000. Stick that in your pipe and huff it, Allday.
Dan Kelly – Everything’s Amazing
Things you didn’t know about the nephew of Australia’s greatest Kelly (sorry Ned) Paul, one Dan Kelly: there is no terrain he can’t rock a Korg on, be it on a beach or in a stream, also he can create musical instruments using lightning beams shot from his hands. That’s if you take his latest music video for single Everything’s Amazing! as gospel (I am).
Taken from his 2015 LP Leisure Panic, The track itself is a serene, happy-go-lucky love song and will have you nodding your head in utter contentment. The video for Everything’s Amazing! features some absolutely jaw-dropping natural landscapes in both Cambodia and in Dan’s local Victoria. He gets right in touch with Mother Nature for this one. Featuring flying CGI dolphins and galloping horses while Dan and friends sip coconuts on bamboo rafts, have singalongs on tree branches and do a spot of holistic (probably) dancing here and there, it’s got just everything you want there to be in a music video by far.
The Blaze – Virile
Popping across the Atlantic for a stop in France for this next one, with French production duo The Blaze and their new single Virile.
It’s a dark and stormy cut just made for the midnight hour, a mellowed out backbeat buoying along some bass-heavy vocals, the synths kicking the door in around the halfway mark make the whole thing just soar. The video depicts what looks like a real good boys night in, an apartment full of dancing and durries and great times between the pair, the bromance spending the entirety of the music video teasing a ‘will they or won’t they’ proper romance.
The song can be caught on the aptly in this case titled Bromance Records and their latest compilation album, Homieland Vol. II. Look out for this French duo in the future too.
Oh Wonder – Lose It
Just a hop, skip and a jump across the English Channel into London with duo Oh Wonder for this next video, one that will absolutely tug at your heartstrings.
Lose It is the title, a track from their gobsmacking 2015 self-titled LP: a year-long project that saw a new track released each month. It’s electro-pop that will soothe the soul, gorgeous vocal harmonies dancing with some brassy synths and a lilting piano to create a four minute slice of paradise on the ears.
The video is so refreshingly cool too, Oh Wonder setting up a fake audition for dancers to star in their music video. Each dancer thinks they’re competing for the one spot, it’s only when the confetti explodes from the roof and a horde of backup dancers join them that they realise they’re already starring in the video. Reactions are priceless.
Having just slayed Australia on a tour including stops at Falls Festival, Oh Wonder are poised for a very, very bright future with tracks and visuals as stunning as this.
Eskimoe – The Ceiling (ft. ThisisDA)
Sticking in the UK for this next one, although going a little dark and somber. It’s the latest track from Oxford RnB singer Eskimoe, The Ceiling. Gritty and gloomy, an atmospheric backbeat that mimics an English drizzle with Eskimoe’s haunting vocals spread over the top, a featured verse from Bristol MC ThisisDA upping the tempo, the combination creating a lights-off deep thinker of a track.
The video complements the sound wonderfully, grainy black and white shots of the wintery grey skies and ceaselessly tagged buildings of urban Britain that’ll have you thankful for the summer heat of Australia or tugging your jacket a little tighter if you find yourself in the Northern Hemisphere.
Watch the hype for Eskimoe escalate in the very near future.
Run The Jewels – Meowpurrdy
Jesus Christ. Just when I thought I couldn’t hate cats for the horrific little creatures that they are, rap kings Run The Jewels are fixing to have me in a cold sweat every night re-visualising their latest music video.
Yes the cat-noise remix album we all didn’t know we needed (we definitely did though) was definitely so much cooler than I initially thought it ever could be. They’ve already released two videos for tracks from the album (both of them terrifying) to date, but this is on another physical plane of nightmare right here.
Made for Meowpurrdy (the remix of initial album-starter Jeopardy), it features a whole lot of melted face and creepily warped out cats all over your screen. Created by English animator Cyriak, it’s a trip and will probably have you glancing at your nearest feline friend forever just to make sure it doesn’t grow a third eye and start trying to murder you. Despite all that cat-induced terror, the song still goes as unbelievably hard as ever and is a nice little reminder that Run The Jewels 3 is imminent…
The Chemical Brothers – Wide Open (ft. Beck)
Manchester electronic royalty The Chemical Brothers have a brand new and mindbending music video out this week for their latest single. Taken from their number one album Born In The Echoes from 2015, Wide Open is a cracker, featuring Kanye West‘s favourite Grammy-winner of all time, Beck.
Those same familiar, pulsating beats and synths that The Chemical Brothers have made a multi-decade career out of, with Beck’s unmistakeable voice guiding it all, Wide Open is a banger in every facet. The video ups the ante as well, dancer Sonoya Mizuno reanimated for a dance around an underground parking lot in ways that will have you double-taking at the sheer effort the visual effects team have gone to here.
Stellar and creative through the absolute roof, you’d expect nothing less from a duo as seasoned as The Chemical Brothers.
The Rubens – Hold Me Back
Fresh off of taking out 2016’s Triple J Hottest 100 in polarising fashion, The Rubens aren’t resting on their laurels for a second. Immediately after taking out perhaps the biggest bragging rights in Australian music for chart burner Hoops, the boys have hit up with a video for their latest single Hold Me Back.
The video is a warm and fuzzy, sepia-toned snapshot of Australia. It might as well have been any number of Hottest 100 parties this year, verandah drinks and beach trips set to a soundtrack of world-beating modern Australian rock interspersed with shots of the band rehearsing and fooling around, the whole thing culminating in one of their mammoth live shows with frontman Sam Margin crowdsurfing in an inflatable pool.
Say what you will about The Rubens, this latest music video is a cracker and a snapshot into their lives as a band that fans will appreciate.